Trading with a plan

After trading real account(s) and loosing so many hard earned euros due to so many different reasons I decided to make a PLAN. Better late than never...

Also many professionals suggest making a journal, and a txt file in the desktop's corner can be.... forgot and lost quite easily. So why not here?

I understand my plan limits certain opportunities for profit and I made it fully acknowledging that. But it (hopefully) limits more opportunities for a loss that it limits opportunities for a profit.

Rules of the plan and reasons behind them:

1 Trading plan and chart templates (that are not marked as *unsure*) can be revised ONLY once a week on sunday and ONLY if a drawdown on the account is higher than 15% or the account was in drawdown for 4 weeks straight. The extra beta-testing plan (0.01 lot) can be made at a later time with at least 25 trades apart.
Reason: Too much switching is one of the worst sins.
2. After 10% drawdown, no more than 1% per trade. Period.
Reason: Revenge trading. Been there. More than once. More than twice.
3. No more than 2 trades per day, no more than 9 per week
Reason: Overtrading and getting a wrong idea of "it must retrace now. NOW NOW NOW". Going against trend.
4. Stop loss MINIMUM 15 pips (except rule 5)
Reason: Scalping for 2-5 pips as a way of trading ? Been there. More than once. More than twice.
5. Once a day, stop loss can be 10 pips, but ONLY if a trade is planned at least 1 hour ahead.
Reason: Jumping in on emotion. Also giving a little flexibility to rule 4.
6. After initiating a trade, either SL will be hit, TP will be hit (open no-tp trades must have mentally at least 1:2), BE will be hit (80% TP then BE), or the trade will exit friday before NY close - except rule 7.
Reason: I've edited SL and TP after being IN the trade way too many times. Almost always based on emotion.
7. If the trade is at least 50% in profit and there is a clear channel and London/NY is about to close and price is near the edge of the channel, then exit can be performed manually.
Reason: Giving a little bit of flexibility to rule 6.
8. Initiating a trade ONLY after checking forex calendar for red news.
Reason: I forgot couple of times... margin call due to stupid forgetfullness hurts.
9. R:R minimum of 1:1.5
Reason: No hardcore scalping.
10. Minimum of 10 minutes between trade idea and pulling the trigger.
Reason: Yeah Reason. Not emotion.
11. At least 2 technical reasons to trade or not to trade.
Reason: I followed a perfect trendline - only to see it break and return back to original trend. I followed perfect elliot wave to see it have a 6th wave. I entered a breakout after long and narrow range only to see it being fake. I entered on big ressistance line thinking the price cannot rise higher after such a tremendous uprise only to see it eat the ressistance like it's nothing.
Tools to choose from:
Trendlines
Fibonacci retracement and extension
Ressistance/Support
Haos mod mtf oscillator.

Only As filters (intended to use sporadically as hints):
Rainbow MA
Candlestick/VSA
J-boilinger
j-double-stochastic

Tools I purposefully will ignore:
- Classic Breakouts
- Harmonic patterns
- Normal patterns like double top/head and shoulders
- Elliot waves
- pivot points
- atr points
Reason: I cannot use them efficently, thus they cloud my judgement. Also many of those tools have it's representation in the tools I will use.
12. Fundamentals must agree.
Reason: Fundamentals are leading not lagging indicators.
13. Sentiment must agree.
Reason: A great contrarian indicator if big banks are hunting small fishes.

14. This question must be asked and answered:
Is it a preemptive entry or too late entry ?
Reason: Been there. More than once. More than twice.
15. Top-down look M,W,D must be checked
Reason: estimating overall bias
16. Checking other pairs for correlation
Reason: If rise is expected but all other correlated pairs are falling then...no trade.
17. *unsure* Scaling in can only be done twice within one trade (counts as one trade), with factor of 0.6 maximum.
Reason: Not sure this rule will stick. Not sure I will scale in at all.

Beginning: Monday 19th Dec. Account atm: 612 EUR.

You should add to your plan : don't trade (or be very very cautious) within the worse period of the year.

Starting the Christmas week isn't a great idea ... I would wait after the first week of the new year.

Attached is a template I found on one of the other threads ....Cant remember the contributors name, but it's pretty good.
I was going to do one with more patterns, reasons I took the trade etc ...Which I probably should still do.....
But if it helps you setup your trading plan thats great....Best of luck. As Ferrufx says however...Start in January when all the banks are back from holidays....

Be honest and confess, the whole reason you are doing this to whitewash and fund another account.
One question, are you going to fund a brand new account or the old one?
Answer will tell about your trading future

I'm not exactly sure what do You mean by whitewash? Start anew?

I am pleased with my broker, low spreads, low slippage during non-news, why would I change a broker if I have nothing against it?

I said account, not broker

"are you going to fund a brand new account or the old one?"

Then you leave me even more puzzled. Why would I create another account wtih the same rules/commissions/other specifics at the same broker ?


I'm using the same account with the same broker. If You have some conspiration ideas in Your mind, like stop hunting for example - I do believe in it, but not by brokers, but by large players.

This is useful.

I like plan. Plans for moneys! I likes!

Rich is good. Good peoples, rich peoples.

I want good man, too!